Reporting on Human Islets

As a leading scientific journal in the field of islet biology and pathophysiology, Diabetes supports the development of standards and criteria for assessing and reporting critical characteristics of human islets used for research.  To support this effort, and as described in a joint editorial and policy developed by the editors of Diabetes (https://doi.org/10.2337/dbi18-0055) and Diabetologia (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00125-018-4784-y), Diabetes requires authors of manuscripts that include human islet data to provide a completed checklist (Human Islet Checklist.doc download) at the point of submission that reports on the critical characteristics of human islets used for the research. The checklist is adapted from that proposed by Hart and Powers: Hart NJ, Powers AC. Progress, challenges, and suggestions for using human islets to understand islet biology and human diabetes. Diabetologia 2018 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00125-018-4772-2).

Within the Human Islet Checklist (Human Islet Checklist.doc download), authors are required to disclose, in table form, the source, isolation center, and unique identifier number for each islet preparation; the age, sex, BMI, and HbA_1c (or other measure of glucose control) of the donor; and whether the donor had diabetes. These data should be reported in such a manner that protects the identity of the donor. Authors are encouraged but not required to provide additional data to better characterize the human islets used for experimentation, including the cause of donor death, measurements of islet purity and viability, functional measures (e.g., glucose-stimulated insulin secretion), ischemia duration, and culture time. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, the completed checklist will be published as online-only supplemental material with the published paper.  

The editors of Diabetes believe this policy is an important step to improving the reproducibility and transparency of human islet studies reported in the journal, encouraging the reporting and standardization of human islet preparations and methods used by individual laboratories, and by extension facilitating comparisons among studies using isolated human islets.